By Rabbie Serumula
A child’s final moments should never be spent gasping for air in a pit toilet. Nor should their innocence be stolen by the very teachers entrusted to guide them. Yet, in South African schools, children face both these horrors—one of infrastructure, the other of predation. And somehow, we’ve normalised both.
We rage against pit toilets, and rightly so. We count the names of children who have drowned in them, their deaths a brutal indictment of government neglect. But there is another crisis that does not make the news as often—one that leaves no body to retrieve, no visible grave to mourn. It is the quiet, insidious abuse carried out by teachers who see classrooms as hunting grounds and students as prey.
This is not an either-or conversation. It is not about deciding whether we should care more about collapsing infrastructure or the presence of predators in schools. Both demand our outrage. Both are preventable. And both, disturbingly, continue to thrive in a country that claims to prioritise the future of its children.
Recently, I shared a video on Facebook highlighting the tragic reality of pit toilets in our schools. In response, Simphiwe Nkuna commented, shifting the focus to another pervasive issue: the predators masquerading as educators. He wrote:
"Not to say that safer toilets are not important... but I think there should be more done in the vetting system for who gets to qualify to teach these kids. It bothers me that we talk about getting these fancy flushing toilets while about 80% of teachers you will come across here in SA are actual sex offenders. Some aren't even reported yet."
I cannot corroborate his statistics of 80%, even though many incidents go unreported due to fear and systemic failures. But his words struck a chord, prompting me to reflect on my own experiences. In high school, a classmate was “in a relationship” with one of our teachers. Today, she is married to him with children. Some might see this as a vindication of their union. But was it? Or is it a glaring example of how we've come to excuse and normalize the abuse of power in our educational system?
According to a 2019 report by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), cases of sexual violence in schools are severely underreported, with teachers often being reinstated after minimal consequences. The Department of Basic Education itself has acknowledged that the vetting system for educators is inadequate, with background checks sometimes overlooked entirely. A 2023 Amnesty International report found that South Africa has over 3,000 unresolved cases of sexual misconduct by educators, with many of the accused still in classrooms.
Simphiwe later sent me another message that cut even deeper:
"My daughter is much safer in the pit toilet than in those classrooms with those predators we haven’t figured out."
Imagine a parent believing that their child’s best odds of survival lie in the very infrastructure we’ve deemed a national disgrace. That’s not just a crisis—it’s a failure of conscience. A failure of leadership. A failure of all of us. If the people who should be listening won’t, then we must force them to. The safety of our children cannot remain a debate—it must become an ultimatum.